LEAPS Project News

Media Coverage

In the world of development economics, where Kennedy School Public
Policy Professor Asim Ijaz Khwaja does much of his work, education is seen, along
with health, as one of those great human capital investments that can
help lift a country from poverty.

Despite much of the troubling news that has come out of Khwaja’s
native Pakistan in the past decade, he and his co-authors — Tahir
Andrabi, of Pomona College, and Jishnu Das, of the World
Bank’s research group — looked more carefully and saw a development
few others were noticing. Not the story that was being exaggerated
across much of the Western media: the rise of madrassas, Islamic schools
that were being blamed for increased fundamentalism and militancy
throughout the Muslim world. Those schools serve no more than 3 percent
of schoolchildren in the country.

QUTBAL, Pakistan — The schoolhouse is so tiny that dozens of pupils have to sit outdoors.They're lucky if their teachers have more than a basic education. And the chanting of math equations and Quranic verses gets so loud that the children have a hard time hearing themselves. Yet the pupils love the Islamia Model School, one of thousands of private schools popping up in Pakistan. Unlike at area public schools, Islamia's seven teachers show up regularly to work. Unlike at religious schools, its curriculum extends well beyond Islam. Plus, it has desks and chairs — no small thing to the many poor families who enroll their children here. Pakistan is seeing a surge in private schools, a trend some find hopeful in a country where the government education system is decrepit and the other alternative is religious schools, known here as madrasas, which offer little education beyond memorizing the Quran and are seen asone source of Islamic militancy.

What can government schools learn from private schools? Is the level
of learning success higher in private schools because teachers are more
closely monitored for their attendance? Is it that the teachers are
more qualified, and therefore paid higher? Is it that parents who pay
fees are motivated to make their kids study harder? Are children who go
to private schools richer, and therefore healthier and smarter? Or is
it that private schools, because they are for-profit institutions, are
investing more back into their organisations? But into what
specifically? Is it books? Better infrastructure?

Knowledge is
power: The reality of Pakistan's
private schools is far from the hysterical image of madrasas.

On May 3,
the New York Times published a lengthy description of Pakistan's
education system. The article, like so many before it, rehearsed a well-known
narrative in which government schools are failing while madrasas are
multiplying, providing a modicum of education for Pakistan's poorest children.

"The
concentration of madrasas here in southern Punjab has become an urgent concern
in the face of Pakistan's
expanding insurgency," veteran Times reporter Sabrina Tavernise wrote.
"The schools offer almost no instruction beyond the memorizing of the
Koran, creating a widening pool of young minds that are sympathetic to
militancy."

...

Unfortunately,
this well-intentioned approach risks failure. First, contrary to the public
hysteria about madrasas serving as "weapons of mass instruction," in
2005, just 1.3 percent of children in Pakistan's four main provinces
attended madrasas. Most students attend public schools (nearly 65 percent), and
the remainder attend nonreligious private schools (34 percent). Nor are
madrasas the last resort of the poor. In fact, the socioeconomic profiles of
madrasa and public school students are quite similar -- except that madrasas
have more rich students than public schools. Of the extremely small number of
households enrolling at least one child full time in a madrasa, 75 percent use
other types of schools to educate their other children.

WASHINGTON, June 7: Contrary to a perception about proliferation of
madressah education in Pakistan, just 1.3 per cent of children in the
country’s four provinces attended seminaries, says a World Bank funded
survey released recently in Pakistan.

Authors -- Tahir Andrabi,
Jishnu Das, C. Christine Fair, and Asim Ijaz Khwaja – published an
article in the June issue of the Foreign Policy magazine, discussing
various options for reforming the education system in Pakistan.

According
to this survey, nearly 65 per cent students in Pakistan attend public
schools and about 34 per cent attend non-religious private schools.

Mohammed
Anwar is one of the new breed of “edupreneurs” or educational entrepreneurs
transforming the school sector in India.

In 1987, he
started a low-cost private high school with 34 students in a small, rented
building in Hyderabad.

Today, M.A. Ideal
High School has about
2,000 children enrolled.

Inspired by
the work of Professor James Tooley, the Newcastle University
professor of political studies in education and a leading international
advocate of budget private schools for the poor.

Mr. Anwar
opened another four branches under the same banner of M.A. Ideal High Schools
in the slums of Hyderabad
and in a poor, rural area.

All schools
are coeducational; teaching is in English; and the target market is low-income
families. Parents pay low fees of between $24 and $49 per annum.

“My school
is popular with parents because they are satisfied with the education,” says
Mr. Anwar. “There is a low-fee structure, good infrastructure, separate classes
for high school girls, merit scholarships, and computer education.”

Disillusioned
by chronic teacher absence and low-quality teaching, the poor in urban and
rural India
are flocking to private schools.

“In private
schools, the management will pay only if teachers are present,” Mr. Anwar says.
“If they are irregular in their attendance, they will be fired. More
importantly, the management is always monitoring the teachers.”

The Learning and Educational Achievement in Punjab Schools (LEAPS) Report provides an overview of the education sector based on the 2003 LEAPS Survey of schools, teachers, children, and households throughout rural Punjab.